One of the UK's most high profile stock-pickers has suspended trading in his largest fund as rising numbers of investors ask for their money back. Neil Woodford said after "an increased level of redemptions", investors would not be allowed to "redeem, purchase or transfer shares" in the fund.

Investors have withdrawn about £560m from the fund over the past four weeks. However, it was a request from Kent County Council to withdraw £250m that led to the suspension.

At its peak, the Woodford Equity Income fund managed £10.2bn worth of assets, such as local authority pension funds. However, it now manages £3.7bn, according to the financial services and research firm Morningstar. Mr Woodford's firm, Woodford Investment Management, is also the biggest investor in Kier Group, the construction and services group which on Monday warned on profits, sending its shares crashing 41%.

"But he hasn't got anything on!" the whole town cried out at last. The Emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he thought, "This procession has got to go on." So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn't there at all.

>>7542He doesn't need to do anything like that. Woodford charges 0.75% per annum for managing investors money. When you're managing billions that turns into a rather nice slice of the pie.

Woodford holds a lot of unquoted stocks, around 18%, which can be illiquid and this creates a mismatch with the nature of an open ended fund; if lots of people want their money out then they might not be able to raise funds quickly by selling shares. They'll also want to protect remaining investors in the fund by making sure they're not disadvantaged by being forced to offload lots of stock at what might not be the best time to sell them.

>>7544This is why you need to cash out of Ponzi schemes early, even if it involves leaving some hypothetical money on the hypothetical table.
Timing this strikes me as being as slightly easier playing the markets directly. So, where can a chap find a decent Ponzi scheme in its early days, with a tolerably competent runner?

>Woodford holds a lot of unquoted stocks, around 18%, which can be illiquid and this creates a mismatch with the nature of an open ended fund;

If an investment is Illiquid it isn't really an investment is it, it's a loss. If they are that great of deal to have been worth the risk of buying over listed stocks one would assume that they would want to keep them.

>if lots of people want their money out then they might not be able to raise funds quickly by selling shares. They'll also want to protect remaining investors in the fund by making sure they're not disadvantaged by being forced to offload lots of stock at what might not be the best time to sell them.

This isn't someone trying to offload their 10k of indexed shares, this is 250 million, you can divide that up however you want in trading. No one is being disadvantaged, apart from Woodford Equity by a loss of confidence in them.

>So, where can a chap find a decent Ponzi scheme in its early days, with a tolerably competent runner?

I have many years experience working in the sector and have a wonderful opportunity for you to get in at the ground level. I accept funds in cash, cryptocurrency, via wire transfer and Bearer bonds. If you wish to invest in cash, name a city of your choice and I'll arrange to met you there in a multistory car park at night.

This oppertunity is not open to undercover policemen, if you are an undercover policeman you have to tell me if I ask 'are you an undercover policeman?' that's the rule.

>If an investment is Illiquid it isn't really an investment is it, it's a loss. If they are that great of deal to have been worth the risk of buying over listed stocks one would assume that they would want to keep them.

The FCA permit open-ended funds to hold up to 10% in unquoted shares. Woodford's are in the likes of Atom Bank and biotechnology companies, usually listed in Guernsey, in the hope that one day they'll float on one of the major exchanges. It's a massive risk and I doubt most investors were aware of this weighting.

He's tried to get around the cap by exchanging the holdings for shares in his close-ended Patient Capital Trust, but by the Equity Income fund holding shares in the Patient Capital Trust it means they're still exposed to it. It's a sleight of hand.

>No one is being disadvantaged, apart from Woodford Equity by a loss of confidence in them.

It depends which stocks they decide to sell. If they're forced to sell stocks they don't want to then the long-term growth prospects of the fund will be reduced and the remaining investors will be worse off in the long run.

Incidentally, I was told by a Woodford rep last year that their previous sell offs meant that they had trimmed the portfolio down into holding only stocks they thought would come good, usually UK domestic focussed ones, but they've kept tanking. They also told us that if the fund doesn't turn around this year that it never will so they might as well give up.

None other than their own statement. But what do we call that thing when someone refused to give back something to the owner and assumes their rights?

>the FCA permit open-ended funds to hold up to 10% in unquoted shares. Woodford's are in the likes of Atom Bank and biotechnology companies, usually listed in Guernsey, in the hope that one day they'll float on one of the major exchanges. It's a massive risk and I doubt most investors were aware of this weighting

So if you agree that the defrauded investors and used a loophole to breach Ferengi Commence Authority rules why are you arguing?

>it depends which stocks they decide to sell. If they're forced to sell stocks they don't want to then the long-term growth prospects of the fund will be reduced and the remaining investors will be worse off in the long run.

It would but we are talking about the withdrawal of £250 million here. They are more than capable of dividing that number across their assets in a way where they meet the minimum trading requirements.

>Incidentally, I was told by a Woodford rep last year that their previous sell offs meant that they had trimmed the portfolio down into holding only stocks they thought would come good, usually UK domestic focussed ones, but they've kept tanking. They also told us that if the fund doesn't turn around this year that it never will so they might as well give up.

Well that certainly sounds like evidence they aren't operating in the best interests of their investors doesnt it.

>>7549>But what do we call that thing when someone refused to give back something to the owner and assumes their rights?

They will be getting their money back, they're just facing a delay whilst the money is raised.

Dealing in the Equity Income fund was suspended by Link Fund Solutions, the fund’s Authorised Corporate Director, to protect existing investors, following concerns about redemptions.

The fund has fallen in size over the last year, due to poor performance and investor outflows. The fund size is currently £3.7 billion, down from £6.8 billion a year ago. A significant reduction in fund size jeopardises manager Neil Woodford’s ability to run the fund effectively. Link has taken action in order to protect investors who wish to remain in the fund, who could otherwise be negatively affected by fund redemptions.

>So if you agree that the defrauded investors and used a loophole to breach Ferengi Commence Authority rules why are you arguing?

I'm not arguing. The man is a charlatan who has built up cult status as some form of mastermind for avoiding the tech bubble. The reality is that he runs equity income funds so he had literally no reason to hold zero dividend tech stocks when that bubble burst.

>It would but we are talking about the withdrawal of £250 million here. They are more than capable of dividing that number across their assets in a way where they meet the minimum trading requirements.

It's not just £250 million which, if Kent County Council had any sense, they'd have forewarned Woodford about and tried to take in stages rather than requesting it in one go but that's local authorities for you. Other investors have taken millions out and yesterday the fund took a battering as Kier declared a profit warning and its share price fell by 40% - some people have taken to shorting Woodford stocks because he's developed the reverse Midas touch.

>Well that certainly sounds like evidence they aren't operating in the best interests of their investors doesnt it.

They're convinced they're doing the right thing even though all evidence is pointing to the contrary. Our rep has been in touch today and, once you cut through all the bluster, the message essentially boils down to blaming it on investors for overlooking the fundamentals when making decisions. They're becoming increasingly deluded but, even if their calls turn out right, they've fallen so far behind the market they probably wouldn't even catch up.

>>7552 I'm guessing not, given that question.
If it's just that your investment in the fund goes up & down with the value of the fund, and you can cash out (mostly) any time, then I might.
However, if they have to expose their dealings and assets, then why aren't there copycat funds charging less than 0.75%, for the same trades executed a few days (or whatever the reporting time is) later?
And if they don't expose their assets and (therefore) trades, why should I trust them that the assets thy say they have, are actually there? What if they've run out of funds, proper ponzi style?

>>7553It's primarily the net asset value divided by the number of units held in the fund. Most OEICs (Open-Ended Investment Companies) are on a single price basis. For your typical equity fund the assets will simply be the number of shares held multiplied by their share price.

Each fund sets it own price. Those for 'actively' managed funds are higher than those which 'passively' track an index, such as the FTSE 100, because the fund manager tries to add value by making calls on which shares to be overweight and underweight in. They have mixed success. You can get index tracker funds for less than 0.10% per annum.

In addition:

>Fund assets are held in safekeeping on your behalf by a trustee or depositary. If an authorised investment firm goes into default, your assets are protected. You continue to own your investment and the fund’s assets are still invested as before.

Back when I was a lad, you could get condoms for free from a few places - the GP, the GUM clinic, the counsellor at school - usually a big bowl of Pasante johnnies you could just take whenever you popped in. I'm fairly surprised there's not a similar system for blob rags by now, you'd think there would be.

Anyway I think tampons should be about as expensive and accessible as bog roll. I'm sure you can get bog roll from a food bank, so why not tampons? Is there a Tesco Basic tampon? I know it might not be the best, but it's the same as cheap loo roll innit, you get used to it.

People say stuff like this, but the problems blokes have, like it really, really hurting when you get kicked in the balls, don't mean we all get free bollock armor on our 16th birthday, does it? Men go bald but we don't get a free transplant surgery, do we?

I get that men have it better than women in general, I don't want to deny sexism is rampant and apparent, but I get tired of the "if men did x then this wouldn't be an issue" - I just don't think it's true. Tampons are expensive not because society is sexist, but because our governments and corporations are fuckers.

Because men don't expect to get kicked in the balls every month where as women expect to bleed every month but apparent still can't afford it in their budget that is at the very worst provided by the state.

Tampons should be free like all other things we are provided with in our daily lives by the state to cover men's basic biological needs like Toilet paper, shelter, food and water.

Yes, you can get tampons from a food bank. Yes, there are Tesco own-brand tampons and they cost 4p each. If someone can't afford tampons, their life is comprehensively fucked in a thousand other ways.

There's no such thing as food poverty or fuel poverty or period poverty, there's just poverty. There's no such thing as food money or fuel money or tampon money, there's just money. If poor people can't afford to live, just fucking give them more money.

It's piss simple, we can easily afford it, we're just ruled by a kleptocratic gerontocracy of baby boomers who paid fuck-all in national insurance and expect younger people to fund their gold-plated pensions. There has been no "austerity", just a grotesque redistribution of wealth from the young to the old on the order of trillions of pounds. If you want a fairer society, send your nan to Dignitas.

I think most people don't have a problem with tackling poverty and taking people out of it. Shat they have a problem with is treating it as a womens issue like they are a special case that deserves extra attention from other poverty for no other reason then it is the society approved persecution complex.

I see fisherfolk use this hypothesis about a lot of things, and it's almost always bollocks. You have to remember up until recently women were essentially men's property, so the man had to buy the tampons, along with everything else she ever owned, for her. They weren't free then were they.

The only actual difference is that if men bled out the cock every month, you wouldn't see articles in the Graun whinging about it.

If poor women are going to spend all their money on smoking 50 fags a day you'd think they'd have the sense to collect up all their used tabs, tape them together and use them as tampons. The filters would work great as a period blood absorber.

Hmm, mooncups are unreasonably cheap. Do they really have to fold? Can you just ram a gold (plated) egg cup up there?
A product's nothing unless you can get competetive about it.
If it's _got_ to be floppy, surely reconstituted kelp or something would be better than nasty chemical silicone. Organic, recyclable, and blessed with a short life.

People talk about poor people struggling, but the ones I know all use the likes of Kodi or other forms of piracy, get cigarettes and meat that have 'fallen off the back of a lorry' and get up to all sorts of of japes. When I was growing up everyone had a chipped PlayStation and you could buy copies of the latest games for peanuts. Poor people do not go without; they are crafty and resourceful.

Anyway, my point is that if we started making counterfeit tampons we could probably live like kings.

If we're all done being shitty edgelords, "period poverty" is mainly about access, and in this country it's typically only a problem in the Adam Johnson demographic. As a result, schools and colleges are being encouraged to supply sanitary products for their students.

Then I'm not sure it really exists. I couldn't afford to buy myself a tamogochi. That didn't mean I was suffering tamogochi poverty. Also i asked my parents for it. If the problem here isn't just regular garden variety poverty and that the parents don't want to buy toiletries for their children that they need. There is a serious problem that isn't poverty and labeling it as poverty is intellectually dishonest and doesnt get to the root of the problem.

That nonce footballer. So presumably he means the underage, who would struggle for obvious reasons. Their parents have got to be pretty harsh though.

Anyway they have given away tampons at schools and colleges for yonks. I remember young lassies getting mocked relentlessly (by other girls, weirdly) whenever they'd been to visit the nurse's office, because it usually meant they'd just come on. Kids are terrible.

>>7584Adam Johnson is a notorious footie nonce who groomed a lass in Year 10 before fingering her in his car and failing to get a blowjob. Presumably paedos forget to get tampons for the blood from all those broken hymens; that's how they get caught, you see.

I got my first blowie at 15, and the lass was 15 too - it was absolutely shite. Even at the time, I could barely enjoy it. All teeth and no depth. I think she spent most of her time just poking it with her tongue. Surely the best deterrent for paedos is a national ad campaign reminding us all how fucking shit at sex young people are?

It could be like the fag packets, but on every condom there's just a picture of a girl with braces looking like she doesn't know where to put a cock.

To be fair I've slept with birds pushing 30 who still hadn't figured it out. I don't think lasses go through nearly the same process of trying to get "good" at sex as your average lad does in his formative years. All that porn you watch as a teenager is more like research. Meanwhile it's perfectly acceptable for a bird to complain that her fella isn't satisfying her- I can't imagine telling a woman she's shit in bed going well at all.

As a sex positive feminist myself, I think there should be an awareness campaign aimed at young women about how to handle a cock. This double standard has gone on too long and is harmful for both genders.

>People with pensions and savings invested in Neil Woodford's now suspended flagship fund have expressed concern over how it was promoted.

>Thousands of individuals also chose the fund for their self-invested pensions or Individual Savings Accounts (Isas), often through fund supermarket Hargreaves Lansdown. The platform has been a cheerleader for Mr Woodford, but some say that went on for too long.

>The fall from grace of Neil Woodford has accelerated after his largest client, St James’s Place, deserted Britain’s best-known fund manager, in one stroke yanking more than 40 per cent of the assets he oversees.

>At the beginning of this week, Woodford Investment Management had less than £8.6bn under management, with St James’s Place accounting for £3.5bn or 40 per cent of the total.

>A millionaire fund manager who locked savers out of their nest eggs is facing demands to hand back nearly £100,000 per day he is raking in from fees. Yesterday he was urged to hand back the money to dismayed savers ‘as a gesture of support’ in a row that overshadowed a videoed message of apology he released.

>And in a move that piled further pressure on the 59-year-old, one major investment platform waived its fees for those using Mr Woodford’s fund – and called on him to do the same. Emma Wall, Hargreaves Lansdown’s head of investment analysis, said: ‘We do not think it is fair to charge our clients a fee while they cannot trade in the fund. This is a frustrating and difficult time for clients and we are doing what we can to support them. We have been in communication with Woodford Investment Management to explain why we think this is the right thing to do and have put pressure on them to do the same.’

>>7596 Surely he's pulled enough out over the years that he can just make a few gestures then walk away leaving some other sap to manage the decline?
I've never really understood what drives the seriously rich, though. I've got plenty of stuff I'd like to do if I didn't have to earn.

>>7597If you're enough of an egomaniac to leave Invesco Perpetual, managing some of the best known funds in the country, to set up a fund house named after yourself then I doubt you'll walk away when things are going wrong. He's largely doubling down on his conviction that he will be right in the long run.

I still hold some WPCT.L, which has never really gone anywhere (up or down) since I bought it a year or two ago.

Today it has been massively sold off, though, presumably because of the Woodford curse. It is trading at a discount to net asset value of ~21% - the assets in the fund are valued at ~89p per share, but the shares are changing hands for only ~64p!

>>7599It's really not looking pretty, is it? Investor hysteria at times like these tends to exaggerate market movements so now could be a good time to buy in. That said, Openwork and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority have removed Woodford from running investments for them; I don't know how much he ran for the latter but for Openwork he had a £330 million mandate.

>The Woodford Investment Management parent group ended last week with £8.6bn of assets. By the end of Thursday it had shrunk to £5bn. Of that, some £3.7bn is tied up in his Equity Income fund, which on Monday blocked investors from withdrawing cash. The stricken fund will shrink dramatically in size should it ever open to trading again as investors demand the return of their capital.

Ouch. I read that Hargreaves Lansdown owned over 30% of Woodford so that explains why they've been pushing it so heavily despite it tanking; around a third of money in the Equity Income fund is via their platform.

I've been in on a meeting with members of Woodford's team. They've confirmed that:-

• The fund is unlikely to open for two to three months at least. It'll take that long to raise the amount required fairly and when they do re-open chances are there will be a dilution levy, i.e. an exit charge for people taking their money out.

• The stocks they've sold so far have been at a profit to the price they bought it for. They're very hopeful that one of the unquoted stocks now held in Patient Capital Trust is going to earn them a handsome profit in the near future.

• They are not going to waive their management fees. They're going to have further internal meetings on this but it's highly unlikely as they don't generate enough income from elsewhere (Patient Capital Trust charges a performance fee rather than a management fee so they've been running it at a loss for a while due to underperformance) and they're already in the middle of cost cutting measures. If they cut off their primary source of revenue for c. three months they'd probably go under.

• When the fund re-opens they're going to hold more FTSE 100 stocks. They doubled down that their view is right to focus on undervalued stocks such as domestic facing housebuilders rather than global facing stocks such as Unilever with ridiculous price-earnings ratios. They're contrarian investors so periods of underperformance should be expected.

• They believe they're the victims of an orchestrated negative media campaign, with negative coverage of them for well over a year. They repeatedly mentioned this largely being the fault of the media - overblowing the issue so that investors would panic and applying pressure so that backers like St James's Place would drop them. They even went a bit tinfoil and said there seems to be a coincidental number of occurrences between negative coverage of Woodford and the stocks they've picked being shorted. They seemed more convinced that Woodford have ran a poor PR campaign rather than running the fund poorly.

Financial Conduct Authority boss Andrew Bailey said fund rules may need amending in the wake of the Woodford fund suspension. In a letter penned for the Financial Times, Bailey said the suspension of the £3.7 billion fund last Monday had raised important questions about the UK’s regulatory approach towards investment in illiquid assets.

Bailey stressed financial markets should support investment in firms that contribute to economic growth and create jobs, which in turn foster innovation. However, he noted that these businesses can often be illiquid and not all will succeed.

‘We need appropriate rules around investments in illiquid securities to protect investors,’ Bailey wrote. ‘I believe there should be limits on the share of illiquid investments held in collective investment schemes whose shares are typically bought and sold freely and frequently.’

• The fund is highly unlikely to re-open before the October Brexit deadline. This is a) in case everything goes to shit with Brexit and b) he's still convinced his stocks will come good and he sees a Brexit resolution as the inflection point, so he doesn't want to sell stocks right before they shoot up.

• When it re-opens he will never handle institutional money again after being burned by the likes of Kent County Council. His main ire was directed at St James's Place, as they released a research paper saying his hit rate is actually better than ever before phoning him a few days later to say they were dropping him due to negative media coverage.

He also had a little cry and said this is the toughest time of his life.

>Investors blocked from Neil Woodford's equity income fund will be unable to access their cash until early December, according to the latest update from fund supervisor Link.

>In a letter to investors published on Monday afternoon Link said a December deadline for the fund to re-open gave Mr Woodford a "realistic" amount of time to re-position the portfolio and improve liquidity across the board.

I'm not sure how exactly you become a high-profile stockpicker. Given that stock picking is not held to be a robustly successful investment strategy in the long run, it makes about as much sense as calling somebody a high-profile football results guesser.

Your strategy as a stockpicker, no matter how smart you think you are, is nothing more than educated guesses, which may be more educated than those of the average layman, but it is not a sign of your acumen as an investor that you have, at some point in time, guessed the trajectory of a stock correctly.

>>7673If you invested with Neil Woodford over the past ~20 years then you'd have made more money than placing it in a FTSE All Share tracker, roughly 25% better off, even with everything going to shit for him recently.

So... he got lucky. Some people get improbably lucky. Just like people who win a lottery jackpot. You wouldn't say somebody has special abilities just because they crossed off the right numbers on a lottery ticket.

Doesn't mean anything really. And if, like probably many people, you weren't in from the beginning but only bought into the fund in 2016, you could be sitting on losses of over 60 percent. If you start the above curve in 2016, then the blue graph looks very different and would nose diver under the red graph.

It's the same as all the cryptocurrencies. Few people owned Bitcoin when it started out, most people only got in on the action when it was becoming silly buggers. And a lot of them are still sitting on close to 50 percent losses. Nobody quite could have predicted that Bitcoin was going to take off the way it did.

>>7676>You wouldn't say somebody has special abilities just because they crossed off the right numbers on a lottery ticket.

You would if they'd regularly managed it on a long-term basis since starting out in the late 80s. The cult of the star fund manager is a dangerous thing, but after he announced he was setting up his own fund management firm around £6billion was withdrawn by investors from the Invesco Income and High Income funds that he was managing for them. That isn't luck, otherwise everyone would be doing it.

Anyone investing in his new venture is sitting on a paper loss, without having to cherry pick it to the maximum possible drop, but the just highlights how most individual investors don't have a fucking clue what they're doing and just get swept up in the momentum of what everyone else is doing rather than acting rationally. People tend to invest at all time highs and then sell when the markets fall rather than the other way around.

Many fund managers fail though. Just because you've got a billion-dollar investment fund, doesn't mean it's going to be successful. There's some survivor bias at play here. There are probably dozens of other funds that were started around the same time but which eventually went tits up.

The fundamental problem of investing is that you can't foresee the future. You cannot predict which industries and which companies will do well in the long run. You can make educated guesses and do your research, but it's no guarantee that you will do well. Actively managed funds try to take this into account by regularly swapping out poorly performing stocks for more promising ones, but that does not necessarily increase your profitability, because every single decision like that comes with a risk of failure. It's a well known fact that as an amateur investor, your performance tends to be the poorest the more actively you trade. Professional investors and fund managers may not make many of the rookie mistakes of amateur investors, but again, it doesn't always mean they'll succeed.

>>7679It depends on what you mean by failure. Many fund managers do not consistently outperform the markets, but over the long-term can beat them due to the additional growth achieved during the periods they do actually outperform them (which is then compounded). My money is in trackers but there's undeniably managers out there, albeit a small proportion, who will beat the markets over the long-term.

It's in the news today that the share price of Woodford Equity Income's second largest holding, Burford Capital, has fallen by c. 60% since yesterday after a report was issued stating it was 'egrgegiously misrepresenting' its return on investments and is 'arguably insolvent'. He is seriously, seriously fucked.

>Many fund managers do not consistently outperform the markets, but over the long-term can beat them due to the additional growth achieved during the periods they do actually outperform them (which is then compounded).

The "hedge" part of "hedge fund" - they don't promise higher returns than the market, but they do promise consistently positive returns even in a downswing because they take both long and short positions.

I stand by what I said about survivor bias. Funds go tits up all the time, and just because somebody has been improbably lucky for many years in "picking" the right stocks, doesn't mean that that investor's luck can't and won't run out. And it could well be that that's what is happening with Woodford Equity.

And even if you've won the lottery numerous times, it does not mean at all that you've got special abilities. Likewise, Investing in the right stocks over and over again may seem like you've got a gift, but as Nietzsche said, no victor believes in chance.

Small investors who sank millions of pounds into the TV property guru Kevin McCloud’s eco-friendly housing ventures have been told they could face losing up to 97% of their money.

For 20 years the star of Channel 4’s Grand Designs has lectured the nation about how to create their dream home – but his own property empire has turned into a nightmare. Between 2013 and 2017, McCloud wooed investors with a string of fundraising schemes that promised returns of up to 9% a year from his Happiness Architecture Beauty (HAB) homes businesses.

But it now emerges that small investors who put £2.4m into one of the bonds are on course to lose between 74% and 97% of their money in a worst-case scenario.

Another set of investors, who sank £1.9m in one of the HAB companies in 2013 and were told to expect dividends of at least 5% by the end of 2016, say they have not received a penny and have been “fobbed off”.

He's not an architect. He's not a project manager. He's not a builder. He's not an engineer. His background is in designing theatre sets and lighting. Ah, but he's off the telly, hosting a series where almost every build goes considerably over budget and isn't completed on time, he's got the right accent and he's given the scheme a nice cutesy name so we should give him our money without a second thought.

>He's not an architect. He's not a project manager. He's not a builder. He's not an engineer. His background is in designing theatre sets and lighting.

One would assume that 20 years of exposure to others projects if he has done any level of analysis at all rather than barked lines into a microphone would give him an idea of he would have a deep understanding of the pit falls and the best contacts in the industry. But apparently it turns out he knew bugger all which explains why i assume he wasn't able to get any professional investors because they would ask basic questions about his business model.

97% loss is quite incredible it raises the question what the fuck he was doing with the money for the last 6 years. Because as someone who doesn't have a clue about building houses I'm sure I could do better than that.

>>7709It's the Dunning–Kruger effect. I've seen it happen quite a few times at work with relatively inexperienced people; they don't know what they don't know so they end up complacent and believing that certain tasks are easier than they actually are. Once you've had a bit of exposure to something a little bit of knowledge can be a very dangerous thing.

>>7706I'm suprised he was the "brains" behind the operation. When I saw the headlines I assumed he was just a cheerleader to get people's attention and some actual business bods would be doing the work.

He's had 20 years of exposure to rank incompetence. He might have learned something if Grand Designs followed professional housebuilders working on commercial developments, rather than amateurs having a go at building some daft folly.

Kevin McCloud at least should have recruited capable financial advisors to help with his scheme. You don't have to have a master's degree in business to be able to be the figurehead of a successful business venture. But if you don't have any training and experience in that field, it's of huge importance to surround yourself with the right people who do, and who can help you turn it into a success.